How significant to national security is human expansion into space? Physically (Man)? Technologically (Satellites)? Economically (Resources)?

If we don't get back out there someone else will and we will be left in the dirt.

Its not as sci-fi as you might think. Anti-Satellite weapons (ASATs) under development include essentially two broad areas – Kinetic Energy (KE), such as missiles and rail guns, which impact targets in space; and Directed Energy (DE), which includes lasers, particle beams, rail guns, and cyber weapons. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, while prohibiting nuclear weapons from being used in any way in space, including being stationed in space, has no specific provision prohibiting the use of conventional weapons, (including lasers), in outer space, which inherently authorizes them. The Outer Space Treaty also contains no prohibition of such weapons being stationed on space-based platforms, including on celestial bodies, or of them being used to target objects on Earth, in space, or on celestial bodies. In other words, the ASATs under development are legal in every way, regardless of the potential damage they can cause to international stability and humanity. There are, however, multiple ongoing debates over the nature, definitions, and classifications of several kinds of ASATs currently in operation or in developmental phases.

Laser weapons utilize a nuclear or chemical reaction process to fire a radioactive beam; particle beams rapidly fire atomic charged particles at a target; and hypervelocity rod bundle weapons and railguns use depleted uranium as ammunition. The potential also exists for the use of a nuclear explosion in space designed to generate an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack on an Earth target, which Russia has worked on developing in the form of an EMP ASAT. With Russia’s recent developments in ASATs, and its stated intent to station weapons in space, the complete weaponization of space by Russia and other nations, in particular the U.S. and China, is inevitable.

Rare earth metals are quickly becoming scarce in the United States, to the point where the international space race to claim the Moon and Mars has become a top priority, not just for control over them, but for the resources available for exploitation. Uranium is actually on the economic radar as a good idea for boosting the American economy, instead of remaining too dangerous to mine and not worth the health risks and environmental hazards – a resource that is in abundance on the Moon. Additionally, there is an estimated one to five million tons of Helium-3 (3He) contained within the Lunar regolith on the Moon, which has the potential to meet all of the power needs of Mankind on Earth for a thousand years with the industrialization and commercialization of fusion power.

Uranium has long been a part of the nuclear fission enterprise on Earth, but comes with high costs, including radioactive waste, and extreme health and environmental hazards due to the radiation produced in the fission process. The terrestrial reserves of other energy producing materials, such as oil and natural gas, will also likely be totally consumed within 50-100 years under current and projected mining and usage rates. Alternatively, 3He can be used to create fusion power. Fusion power can be generated by combining a few different elements, however, combining 3He with more 3He is the most energy efficient, and produces the greatest net energy of all the potential combinations.
3He, unfortunately, exists in very small amounts on Earth, which means that a nation which establishes a mining and transportation industry capable of bringing lunar 3He to Earth, and a fusion plant network which transforms that 3He into power, could hypothetically control a substantial portion of the planet’s energy industry for decades. Some scientific estimates discount the estimates of both the potential amount of extractable 3He in lunar regolith, and the potential to achieve industrial fusion reactors on Earth capable of processing it. Despite some dissent, however, even lunar resources which seem impractical and economically inefficient to transport to Earth for use, may provide substantial economic benefits for space-based uses such as solar power systems and spacecraft fusion engines (built on the moon), which would not require transport back to Earth.

Earth’s finite resources make lunar and space resource exploitation an inevitability, with the most pertinent factor governing future human resource exploitation in space being the question of which nation will achieve a successful and effective industrial supply chain first. The most probable three nations to achieve this are the U.S., the China, and Russia, and the three areas which need to be navigated in order to succeed are facility establishment, production/refinement, and transportation. Establishing lunar facilities is the easiest of these goals, especially when lunar resources which can be used for building are taken into account, which lessens both the amount of materials needed to be brought to the Moon, and the time for construction. Lunar regolith has been experimented on for potential construction properties, and a 2008 NASA experiment found that heating the regolith, and using sulfer as a binding agent, can make a “waterless concrete,” which can be molded, and is nearly as strong as concrete when it hardens. This process requires minimal effort, and relies primarily on direct heat application, and the ability to shape the regolith. Consequently, the entire process can be automated by robots with the appropriate tools on the lunar surface, such as the ones NASA began developing in 2009 specifically for this purpose.

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